The Night Casey Was Born: The True Story Behind the \t\t Great American Ballad "Casey at the Bat"

It seems likely that the author of this slender volume dedicated to \t\t baseball's most famous doggerel would have felt very much at home producing the \t\t hagiographic journalism practiced a century ago. Penned in 1888 by young \t\t Harvard graduate Ernest L. Thayer, "Casey" was calculated to cash in on the \t\t incipient national pastime, then in the throes of its first spasm of widespread \t\t popularity. Perhaps the most popular piece of American verse ever written—its \t\t only rivals being Clement C. Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (today known \t\t as " 'Twas the Night Before Christmas") and Poe's "The Raven"—"Casey" was not \t\t widely hailed upon publication. However, the poem was soon taken up by \t\t well-known stage actor DeWolf Hopper. It would be his signature performance \t\t piece for decades to come, making him just as much the "father" of "Casey" 's \t\t popularity as its actual author. Walsh (Darkling I \t\t Listen: The Last Days and Death of John Keats) succeeds at evoking \t\t the easy familiarity and rough bonhomie of an era whose baseball and theatrical \t\t stars are long since forgotten. He tries his best to heighten the drama of what \t\t may not be a book-length subject, connecting Thayer's composition with recent \t\t heartbreak, and dedicating a chapter to Hopper's previous success on the stage. \t\t Walsh's writing style and pop psychology are almost as quaint as his subject \t\t matter, but the origins of "Casey" are appealing in their own right. \t\t (Feb.)